The Yale lock on Mike’s Portakabin, and the wood on the door surrounding it, were both scratched from where the warden repeatedly missed the keyhole. Laura was pulling her hair out as he missed the lock with the key, time and time again. Once the door was open, he backed off, perched on the edge of a stack of tyres and waited.
Across London, Anik was feigning composure as he instructed a uniformed PC on how the search of Mike’s flat was going to go and what they were looking for. Ridley had gone back to the station, leaving Anik with this weighty responsibility. He waved the search warrant round ostentatiously and was a little bit disappointed that he had no one to actually serve it to.
Mike’s flat was a typical, grubby-looking bachelor pad in dire need of a very deep clean. The carpet was worn thin in a T-shaped pattern, showing that Mike walked most frequently from the kitchen, to his favourite armchair, to his bureau. The bureau was stuffed full of paperwork in no kind of order — bills, bank statements, ownership documents for a Range Rover and some payslips for Barry. This bureau gave Anik two vitally important pieces of information — Barry’s mobile phone number, and the only vehicle registered in his name.
Mike’s expendable cash each month amounted to nothing more than pocket money which, judging by the four empty whisky bottles down the side of his armchair, was mainly spent on booze. There was a block of several years when Mike’s bank transactions occurred in Spain rather than in the UK, so that was presumably where he was living.
The uniformed PC entered the lounge, holding an evidence bag containing an obviously well-used toothbrush with splayed bristles. Anik nodded his approval at the toothbrush being an appropriate DNA source.
‘Can you also bag all of this paperwork, please?’ Anik requested, waving his arm vaguely over the bureau before heading towards the kitchen.
As he left the lounge, he grinned to himself. He thought he sounded just like Ridley — authoritative, commanding, intelligent. Ridley was exactly the kind of copper Anik aspired to be. He wanted nothing more than to be able to dish out an order and then walk away from his subordinates, knowing that they’d do as he asked out of total respect... so it was a good job he didn’t turn around or he would have seen the PC, who was twice Anik’s age, making a ‘wanker’ motion with his hand.
Anik knew Mike’s kitchen would probably be grubby, seeing as they were now nine days into the investigation, but the food in the fridge was way older than that. He gagged as he opened the fridge door and the smell of the cheesy milk hit his nostrils. In addition to the milk, there was a heavily sprouting red onion, half a bottle of white wine, several bottles of beer and a leaking breast of chicken in an open food bag.
The sink was piled high with dirty mugs, each patterned on the inside with several brown rings of varying shades, dating back weeks. Mike definitely wasn’t a man who could survive for long living alone. He needed to be looked after.
As Anik progressed through the flat, each room was a different degree of filth. There were no surprises and definitely no hidden millions. Less than one hour later, the tiny, one-bedroomed flat had been searched from top to bottom. Anik’s final instruction to the PC was to bag all of Mike’s shoes, so that their treads could be compared to any footprints found at Rose Cottage.
Then he bellowed, Ridley-style, ‘I’ll be in the car!’ and left.
Once on the pavement outside Mike’s flat, he realised that ‘I’ll be in the car!’ would have been a far more impressive exit if he was the driver and actually had the car keys.
Mike’s Portakabin contained a grey metal desk with three drawers, a grey metal filing cabinet, two fake leather office chairs and a plastic yucca plant. The desk drawers were pretty much empty apart from the proverbial half-bottle of cheap whisky and two glasses. There was also a chewed pen lid and some paper clips, but nothing else.
Jack flicked through a desk diary, while Laura leafed through files in the cabinet.
‘These are all clients. Low-end security, mainly night shifts. There’s a packing factory, a private hospital, a bit of door work. Nothing exciting. His last few jobs might be worth a look into — see if they could have got him into trouble with anyone.’
In the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet was a grubby old sleeping bag.
‘He sleeps here sometimes.’
Laura stepped outside. Round the back of the Portakabin was a set of deep, wide tyre tracks.
‘Excuse me!’ she shouted to the warden.
‘Range Rover,’ he said before she could ask. ‘Second-hand’s my guess, ’cos new you’d be talking fifty or sixty thousand and Mr Withey didn’t have that. It sometimes sat back there all night, which isn’t strictly allowed but I assumed he’d had another row with the missus and they both needed a little bit of space, so I let it go.’
Laura smiled her thanks and stepped back inside Mike’s Portakabin.
‘He’s on the ball for an old fella.’ She sat on the edge of the metal desk, facing Jack. ‘No laptop. You think he never had one or did he just work from his mobile?’
‘This diary’s mainly work related,’ Jack mused. ‘When he writes down jobs, he includes a lot of detail. Full names, addresses, phone numbers, an outline of what’s needed. Which makes other pages with less detail stand out as maybe hiding something. On the day of the fire, he’s written “RC. 2 a.m. Del.” RC could be Rose Cottage. Who do we think Del is?’
Jack’s mobile pinged and a text message from Anik popped up. Jack read it out.
‘No laptop at the flat. Must be there.’ Jack quickly typed something back and waited for the ping. ‘Anik says it’s all paperwork at the flat. So I don’t think Mike’s got a laptop.’
From nowhere, Laura suddenly got all personal.
‘How’s your dad?’
Jack suddenly felt very guilty for having not thought about Charlie all day, but he definitely didn’t want to have a conversation about him now.
‘He’s going how he wants to go.’
Laura put her hand on Jack’s arm, looked deep into his eyes, gave him a sympathetic tilt of the head... but said nothing. He wondered what she wanted him to do — smile? Cry? Ask for a hug? Not knowing how else to get out of having an unwanted emotional exchange, Jack stood, scooping Mike’s diary up and moving away from Laura.
‘Is this all we’re taking?’ he asked.
He knew he’d been rude, but if he wanted a heart-to-heart about losing his dad, it would be with Maggie. He didn’t know how to explain that, so walking away was actually the most polite response he could think of.
Outside, the warden still sat on the stack of tyres with his head dipped and Jack couldn’t tell if he was sleeping until he heard, ‘Ready for off?’
Jack and Laura thanked him for his time, made sure that they could return if and when the identification of ‘Sheila’ was confirmed, and left Mike’s sparse office in the warden’s shaky, but otherwise very capable hands. By the time they had walked back to their car, the warden was still trying to get the key in the door of Mike’s Portakabin to lock it.
‘Sorry for making you feel uncomfortable,’ Laura said.
Jack didn’t know what she was talking about. He stared at her, racking his brain, before deciding that she must be referring to when she put her hand on his arm. He shrugged and smiled a tight, fake smile.